Dor. I made ’em when I was in love.

Lov. And therefore ought they not to bind? Oh, impious!

Dor. What we swear at such a time may be a certain proof of a present passion; but to say truth, in love there is no security to be given for the future.

Lov. Horrid and ungrateful, begone, and never see me more.

Dor. I am not one of those troublesome coxcombs, who because they were once well received take the privilege to plague a woman with their love ever after; I shall obey you, madam, though I do myself some violence.

[He offers to go, and Loveit pulls him back.

Lov. Come back, you shall not go. Could you have the ill-nature to offer it?

Dor. When love grows diseased, the best thing we can do is to put it to a violent death; I cannot endure the torture of a lingering and consumptive passion.

Lov. Can you think mine sickly?

Dor. Oh, ’tis desperately ill! What worse symptoms are there than your being always uneasy when I visit you, your picking quarrels with me on slight occasions, and in my absence kindly listening to the impertinencies of every fashionable fool that talks to you?

Lov. What fashionable fool can you lay to my charge?

Dor. Why, the very cock-fool of all those fools, Sir Fopling Flutter.

Lov. I never saw him in my life but once.

Dor. The worse woman you, at first sight to put on all your charms, to entertain him with that softness in your voice and all that wanton kindness in your eyes you so notoriously affect when you design a conquest.

Lov. So damned a lie did never malice yet invent. Who told you this?

Dor. No matter; that ever I should love a woman that can dote on a senseless caper, a tawdry French ribbon, and a formal cravat.

Lov. You make me mad.

Dor. A guilty conscience may do much; go on, be the gamemistress o’ the town, and enter all our young fops as fast as they come from travel.

Lov. Base and scurrilous!

Dor. A fine mortifying reputation ’twill be for a woman of your pride, wit, and quality!

Lov. This jealousy’s a mere pretence, a cursed trick of your own devising; I know you.

Dor. Believe it, and all the ill of me you can: I would not have a woman have the least good thought of me that can think well of Fopling; farewell; fall to, and much good may [it] do you with your coxcomb.

Lov. Stay, oh! stay, and I will tell you all.